Quite Lost
by Oparu
Summary: Helen and Will spend some time on a tropical island with intoxicating flowers. Fluffy, smutty, no spoilers.


Hot didn't cover it. Hot implied the air was uncomfortably warm, or that the stove was ready. On this island, hot was a prelude, a tease, something that came before mind-numbing, soul-sucking, wet, extremes of temperature that made him think he'd been diverted to a sauna.

Will was trapped. Effectively marooned, until Henry tracked them down. It would have simply been uncomfortable if he'd been alone. Being with Helen, his boss, the one person in the world he was not entirely sure he could handle being partially clothed around, made it a special, sweltering kind of personal hell.

Of course, it was beautiful. Large tropical flowers beckoned from the fringes of the jungle were they got enough light. Helen had one in her hand, lazily toying with the thick purple petals.

He was safe if he focused on her hand. If he lost focus, let his eyes move, he'd start noticing the lines of sweat on her arms. How the tiny hairs caught the moisture and held it to her golden skin. If he looked, he'd noticed the thicker beads, the ones in the hollow of her neck, sheltered on her collarbone.

Helen stood, and that, thankfully, left him staring at her legs. Will was about to count himself lucky until he found himself fascinated by the way the sand clung to her calves and the smooth, curved flesh that went down to her ankles.

"We need to make a sign," Helen suggested, lowering her hand to him. "Something Henry will be able to see with a satellite. The heat is unfortunate, however, doing it now is a necessity that cannot be avoided."

Standing up put him nearly nose-to-nose with her. Will nodded, swallowing as he fell in step behind her. "Right."

Helen had thought "SOS" might bring them unwanted attention and, like always, he agreed with her. Dragging wood, stones and debris into an "DOC", Will was soon desperate to take off his shirt. When he finally gave in and left his trousers on the beach, he caught Helen grinning at him gently.

"I was wondering why you resisted so long," she explained, standing up to her knees in the ocean, her tight black skirt long since abandoned on the sand. Her top was long enough to hang to her thighs, something he both appreciated and mourned. "I assure you Will," she continued, brightly. "Seeing you in a state of undress is something I can handle with professional restraint, no matter the extremes of the weather."

"Good to know," his smile felt goofy and he wondered if she ever got sick of him looking like an idiot. Her eyes softened as he watched and he felt his stomach warm, like he'd just drank his coffee too quickly.

Slipping around her legs like caressing fingers, the ocean released her as Helen walked up onto the beach. "Come on Will, let's get out of the sun."

* * *

Will was giggling, much like a schoolboy, not that she could tell him. It was her own fault truly. She should have remembered the subtle differences between a _grimorias anthem_ and a _grimorias nocturne_.

"It's an elementary morphology," she chided herself, staring up at the patterns of green light through the leaves above them. "A slight colouration of the petals near the anterior tips, a shifting into the blue spectrum."

"Only you could manage to say 'spectrum' while stoned and make it sound like a biology lecture," Will snorted, rolling his head towards her.

Helen frowned, tightening her brows. "I apologise Will, I have no intention of lecturing you, I merely meant to explain my own folly so we both can be aware of it in the future."

Still shaking his head, Will dragged himself up on an elbow. "Right," he said, still chuckling. "I'm going to bring it up at staff meetings. 'Hey, no one let Magnus near the floral arrangements, she might accidently get us all bombed on LSD orchids."

"They're bromeliads Will-"

"Acid flowers," Will finished, nudging her shoulder with his hand. "Crack daisies, dandelions with one hell of a kick; no matter what you call them, you're saying we're both high."

She inclined her head towards him, feeling the soft, damp wood beneath her temple. "I am afraid our mental states are severely compromised."

"On crack daisies--"

When she smacked his shoulder, something terribly unladylike but irresistible, he hit her back. It escalated, both of them ineffectually slapping each other until she, much too inebriated to know the ridiculousness of her flight, left him in the cool glade and ran out, back to the ocean.

The crashing water sounded like music around her. Will's laughter edged her on until her caught her, thigh deep in the sea, his muscled form pressed against her back.

Turning around, she splashed him with her right hand and he grabbed it.

"Someone's been training," she taunted him, splashing him with the left. Will spat salt water and sputtered for a moment. Helen's moment of weakness, when she felt a chemically altered stab of guilt, was her undoing.

He neatly took both of her arms, pinning them to her sides in a neat, aikido inspired lock Ashley must have taught him. Will's face was mere centimetres from hers. She could see the water snaking down his face. His lips were red, slightly parted from breath, his touch was warm and he was right there.

She'd been working too hard and Will's fingers dug deliciously into her arms. All the mistakes on what should have been a simple mission were hers. The little errors of an exhausted mind she never would have permitted anyone else, but here they were, hip deep in the surf, pressing panting together and all she could think about was that she had the advantage.

Always did.

Her arms were pinned, her blouse was wet and clung to her body revealing a figure she had long ago ceased to feel anything but deep respect for. Will's own t-shirt was soaked, clinging to muscles he'd been developing since he'd started training in earnest.

She knew, of course, because she watched him. Helen watched everything that went on within her walls, kept everyone safe and secure and well-loved. Of course, this required distance. She couldn't be too close to her charges, even her protégé. Not for his own safety, as she told herself over and over, but for hers.

Lovers were an exquisitely painful luxury. A mental illness she willing walked into again and again because it could not be resisted. Helen knew she would outlive them. She knew she would be static while they endured the rigours of age or most often, died, sometimes horribly, because she could not protect them. She could tell herself they made a choice, that they had lived their lives as they wished. Whether longer lives were meant for them in some parallel reality without her influence was the stuff of scholarly debate, something to argue with Nikola and James over too many bottles of wine.

Will was here now. Warmer than the sea, warmer than the sun and so close she could feel his breath.

In relative terms, it was nothing. A simple shifting of her weight, a motion, more happenstance than of any real meaning, and yet, that shift put her lips in contact with his. She'd let him blame the flowers. He'd apologise, later not for the way he released her arms to wrap his hands around her shoulders, but for the way he'd failed to resist her tongue.

She could be very persuasive, Helen reminded herself, running damp fingers beneath his wet shirt and peeling it off his chest. Downright forceful, she added, pushing him back towards the sand.

Will stumbled, and pulled her down with him into the surf. Water rushed up, threatening her blouse and Will pulled it the rest of the way off. Her hair fell wet on her naked shoulders, clinging like serpents. Will's thumb nudged it off her face. His leg guided her in. Over a century of experience took away none of the wonder, and the years within her own that had been celibate made the deranged part of herself that much more eager.

When she covered his lips with a finger, hushing his protest, Will let her lead him back into the trees.

"If need be, we will never speak of this again," she assured him, guiding his fingers to strip off her knickers. They caught round her knees and she barely waited for him to free them. She was the one who tore them, ruining the elastic and the seam.

"Sorry," he muttered into her neck.

Helen tore his shorts off in retaliation, listening to the thread give way beneath her fingers. "Please," she reminded him. "I've ruined much more sophisticated apparel." She could feel him against her thigh, hot and swollen. "In fact," she trailed her hand down his stomach. "The ease of access is one of my favourite twenty-first innovations."

"I can't help imagining you in a corset," he admitted sheepishly, hand just beneath her breast.

"Younger men frequently do," she sighed, easing his hand up to her breast. "i imagine a number of young women as well." The smooth, damp bark of the tree was behind her, the firm flesh of Will's chest was against her and his hand helped move her thigh so her precarious position was more balanced. Fingers fumbled together, ignorant of each other's bodies but more than willing to learn.

Her head went back against the tree, hands tight into his back. Helen guided his leg, helping him find the downed log to give him a better angle. She sighed, then groaned. His breathing quickened with his body. He was young, and eager, but that made him far from unwelcome. He was attentive, responding to her lead mere seconds after she moved his hand or sighed into his neck.

It was on rough side for a first time, clumsy and half-awkward in that wet, hot jungle. His nimble fingers still made her orgasm, shuddering and going limp between him and the tree. Will was a good lover, patient enough to let her pleasure come first. A less experienced woman wouldn't have seen the strain on his face, or known how hard he fought to hold off as long as he had.

Her thighs were still damp and sticky as they stared up at the trees. This time together, his head on her shoulder and his hair drying into salt formed, soft spikes on his head. She'd let them dry a bit more before she untangled them with her fingers. Her own hair would be a mess and she knew there were scratches on her back. His too, she realised, fingers contentedly running over his skin.

"The flowers don't do much, do they?" Will wondered, eyes lazily on her naked breast. "Maybe a little bit of a rush but nothing that would truly inhibit our mental faculties."

Helen laughed, feeling Will's head move with her chest. "Perhaps not. Though you are free to believe they are quite powerful, if that is your wish."

He sat up, trailing a shy hand along her cheek. "See, either way, it's a little terrifying."

"Do elaborate."

"See, one way, I wanted-want-" he corrected, "you on some instinctual level. It's something primal that I can't blame myself for."

"And the other?"

Will's eyes widened, softening as he dared to lean closer. "That's the catch. The other means that I am enamoured with you. You distract most of my waking moments and all it took was the slightest hint of acceptance before I was lost."

"Will," she lifted her head and kissed him, smiling as she lay back down. "I assure you, we are quite lost."

"Right," his sigh was amused, but she couldn't leave him without a better explanation. She was getting soft, wasn't she.

"Which do you wish to believe?"

He lay his head back on her shoulder, curling his body to rest a hand on her stomach. "Should I tell you? Is it really that simple, I mean--"

"Perhaps your inner turmoil would be alleviated by the knowledge that I am taken with you as well, though I initially believed it was a sense of professional respect or a motherly feeling, I have since reconciled that I may have brought you in to make you a far more intimate part of my life."

"Now that's a little frightening," Will murmured.

"Indeed."


End file.
